


Seas The Day

by StoriesBeyondTheStars



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A fish may have been injured in this story, Lance loves the ocean, M/M, Modern AU, This is pure fluff, but not dolphins, diving au?, established klance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:36:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28702275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StoriesBeyondTheStars/pseuds/StoriesBeyondTheStars
Summary: Lance is the host of an ocean documentary series. Keith is his lead cameraman. It's common knowledge that dives are to be taken seriously, and things not going to plan is a cause for concern.And Keith is suddenly very concerned for his boyfriend's sanity.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 99





	Seas The Day

If someone were to tell a teenage Keith that his future career involved the ocean, he would have thought they were an idiot. He grew up in the desert, how could he possibly earn a living with the ocean? Fast forward to the present time, where he was weighed down with all of his protective, state-of-the-art diving gear and top-of-the-line camera, and he couldn’t imagine doing anything else. He lived for the moments where they ventured out to the open ocean with the producers and crew.

Keith didn’t particularly have an interest in marine life growing up, but he loved the idea of exploring the world, and took any opportunity he could to learn how to film any kind of environment. That decision was what had let him meet his muse. Not that he’d ever tell him that. Lance strutted around like a pretentious peacock enough as it was. He didn’t need to know that part of the reason Keith enjoyed his job so much was because he got to film Lance specifically.

It wasn’t  _ his _ fault that the other man was wonderfully charming and wildly charismatic in front of the camera, his passion for the ocean and its creatures oozing out with every word his spoke.

Except for dolphins. Keith wasn’t entirely sure where Lance’s dislike for them came from. The most he got was ‘they know what they did’ or something along those lines. Lance could list every reason why he thought they were the jerks of the ocean world, but never once stated what started the weird one-sided rivalry. He always became so alive when he was riled up like that. Blue eyes wide with life, cheeks pink, lips turned up into a pout, strong hands motioning as he spoke. Maybe Keith would admit to bringing up dolphins more often than not just to see Lance like that. It wasn’t his fault that Lance was  _ wildly _ attractive.

That all added up to the fact that Lance was a natural in front of the camera, and Keith loved filming him for their ocean exploration series. They had an entire team of people with them, but there were many times when it was only Lance and Keith, especially for underwater scenes where they didn’t need a safety dive team close by.

This was going to be one of those times. Keith wasn’t entirely sure why they were at this specific location to shoot, he hadn’t received any information on what kind of animals to look out for when filming. They were close enough to the shore where they’d have great visibility, and everything beneath them was teeming with life. Allura probably just wanted more promotional shots of Lance under the water, that was fine.

Keith was all for shoots like this. Though their nature documentary was dubbed over most of the time, Lance still narrated while they were under water as well. He said it felt more authentic that way. Keith had to agree with that statement, otherwise Lance would have looked like a complete and utter  _ goofball _ , waving his hands around and pointing at random things beneath the waves.

“Ready to go?” Keith looked up at the man in question, decked out in his diving gear as well. Lance shifted a bit from foot to foot, fingers running through his short hair. It was a subtle thing, but Keith knew it was nerves. That was beyond strange. Lance never got nervous in dives.

“Are you okay?” he asked instead of answering the question presented to him. Lance jumped slightly, cheeks turning a shade of pink as he spluttered a bit.

“Yeah, yeah. Of course I am. Perfectly okay. Not a problem here. No problem!” He tried to wink, but it looked more like a grimace accompanied by finger guns. Both of Keith’s eyebrows rose up at the strange display.

“Oh my god,” Pidge, their audio tech, muttered almost gleefully. “This is going to be a disaster.”

“Pidge,” Hunk, their mechanic, scolded her. He placed a large hand on Lance’s shoulder. “It’ll be fine. Everything will go just like you planned.” Hunk turned to Keith and smiled. “Just keep the camera on him, got it?”

Keith nodded his head, and when Hunk shifted away, he looked back to Lance. “You okay? Really?” His genuine worry must have shown through, because the other man smiled at him warmly.

He leaned forward and gave him a quick peck. Just the barest brush of lips against one another. It was still enough to make Keith’s heart beat wildly in his chest. It always was. The ocean gave him so much more than a career and a muse. It gave him the person he wanted to be with for the rest of his life and beyond.

People always stared at them as they went into the water, which made sense, but he felt like there were even more eyes on them today, which was weird. Everything about the day was weird. One of their producers, Allura, looked like she was about to explode from excitement. It was weird and unnerving.

Once they were beneath the waves though, nothing else mattered. The safety divers stayed back a bit, ready to help if a situation got bad. They didn’t matter though. Nothing else did. Keith was already focused on Lance and the camera in front of him. 

Lance, even when he was weighed down by his heavy gear, always managed to be graceful in the water. He moved so fluidly, always spinning and dancing. When they were free diving, with nothing but their snorkels and the camera, Lance always looked so  _ free _ . Keith could stare at him for days beneath the waves. It was definitely a good thing he was  _ paid _ to do that.

They reached the bottom quickly enough, and Keith turned his attention away from Lance to get a few shots of the colourful schools of fish that swam nearby. It was truly a beautiful spot beneath the waves, Keith thought fondly.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Lance muttered, his voice audible over the comms that they had on. “Okay. I can do this. I got this.”

Keith looked over at him, unable to hide his concern. Lance was acting really weird, and that wasn’t a good thing when they were diving. Panicking underwater was something that could truly sink a diver. This was something drilled into Keith’s mind again and again during his classes to get his diving license. It was important to keep a cool head, to keep vigilant. The ocean was something to be respected.

Lance was fiddling with the pouch around his waist. That wasn’t too strange, since he sometimes kept tools in there to measure out different animals, and he also had a knife to cut through nets that fish might be tangled up in. Keith focused the camera on him as he reached into the pouch.

Then his entire body froze, and Keith’s froze in response. He peered around, but saw nothing that would cause that reaction. It wouldn’t be uncommon for a shark or something to be in this type of environment, but that was why they had the safety divers.

“Oh no,” Lance muttered. “ _ Oh no _ .” Lance was good at his job. Really good at it. Keith was always floored by his confidence when it came to diving and interacting with sea life. He was living his dream right now, hosting nature documentaries, and Allura was right when she noted that he had a flare for the dramatic. There was a reason that viewers loved him. For as goofy as he could be though, he always deeply respected the ocean and was aware of its dangers.

Right now he threw all of that out the window. He danced in a circle as he clawed at his pouch. Keith called out to him over the comms, but Lance was still muttering to himself wildly. What the heck was he  _ doing _ ?

If his voice couldn’t catch his attention, movement certainly would. Sure enough, Lance's head shot to him as Keith touched his index and thumb together in a circle, the other three fingers sticking up. It was the diving sign to ask if he was okay, and it required a response or the dive would end immediately. That alone could be enough to help people focus.

He sighed in relief as Lance mimicked the signal back to indicate that things were okay. Even if they clearly weren’t. This wasn’t a life or death kind of panic though. It was just…something else altogether. Now that Keith thought back, Lance was acting jittery for the past week, so distracted that he ended up taking Kosmo out for not one, but two walks (the husky was quite pleased by this).

Keith could see far enough under the water to catch sight of some movement a bit away from them. He looked over to see a small dolphin that careened through the school of silver fish that way. He was  _ sure _ it would send Lance into one of his rants about how he just knew that dolphins were plotting the downfall of mankind, and everything would go back to normal.

Except, when he looked back at Lance, Keith found his boyfriend hovering right above the ocean floor,  _ digging _ for something. What the  _ cheese _ ? He turned the camera to him so he could show him the playback of just how weird he was being. He could only watch with pure confusion as Lance sifted through the dirt with more and more desperation, even swatting a fish away at one point.

“What are you  _ doing _ ?” Keith demanded. He sounded completely baffled, unable to comprehend exactly what was going on in front of him.

“Oh, you know, just doing as I do,” Lance answered almost dismissively as he continued to look around. He suspiciously eyed every fish that came near them, and lunged towards several shiny rocks. “Hunk! I lost it!”

“What do you  _ mean _ you lost it?” Hunk asked incredulously from over the comms, Keith was able to hear him too. It almost sounded like he knew what Lance was talking about, but there was really no way he could understand this. Whatever this was.

“Yeah, he’s definitely lost it,” Keith confirmed, because Lance had lost his mind. Was this some kind of sudden onset dementia or something? Was that a thing? Shiro would know. Keith would ask him when they got back to the boat.

It sounded like Hunk was going to say something in response to that, when Lance let out a high pitched, “No! Nope! Everyone’s fine! Completely fine! I just need to—check that rock over there!” Lance lunged towards an outcropping of rocks and started to look around. “Maybe the current brought it over here? Maybe?”

“What are you looking for?” Keith asked, completely bewildered by Lance’s behaviour. He wasn’t sure whether he should stop filming Lance’s erratic behaviour out of worry that he was filming a genuine mental breakdown, or keep going to show him later on how much a nut he was being when he’d inevitably deny it.

“A rock,” Lance blurted out as Keith swam close to him. He was close enough to see Lance grimace, as if he understood just how bonkers that sounded. Still, up close, he looked even more panicked, and that worried Keith a lot. A fish poked about close by, and Lance lunged at it like he was a cat. “Oh, never mind. I thought the fish had it.”

Nope. Nope they weren’t doing this anymore. Keith twisted around to face the safety divers, clenched his fist, and gave them a thumbs up. Contrary to how it looked, it wasn’t a signal that everything was okay, it was meant it was time to go up and end the dive. He had no idea what had gotten into his boyfriend, but he wasn’t going to let him stay under water and hurt himself.

The other divers mimicked the motion, and Keith turned back to Lance. “We’re going back up to the surface.”

“But I—”

“We’re  _ going _ .” Keith was not going to argue with Lance about this. Not this time. They were doing absolutely nothing productive anyway, so there was no point in staying down there.

Lance spun around in a circle, like a dog chasing his tail, but then slumped down and followed Keith back up to the surface. They both pulled themselves up onto the back of the boat, onto the step that just skimmed the surface of the water.

Keith was on Lance almost as soon as they had their masks off. “What was that? The twisting and turning and punching fish and acting like a lunatic?”

“He punched a fish?” Pidge didn’t have to sound so delighted by this. Keith ignored her anyway, his intense indigo eyes focused on his squirming boyfriend.

“Well, uh, you see…” He trailed off helplessly as he looked around, as if the water itself would have a good excuse for his behaviour. He twisted back to look at Hunk. “Don’t suppose you found it here?” He sighed sadly when Hunk shook his head. “I just—I had something really important with me,  _ really _ important, and now it’s gone. Probably fell out when we first made the dive.”

Keith felt himself melt at just how sad and dejected Lance looked. Whatever it was that he lost, it was clearly upsetting him, and on a personal level, he kind of wanted to fight anything that made Lance sad. He placed his camera securely on the side of the boat and eyed the water, as if he could fight the very ocean itself for making his boyfriend feel this way.

A startled yelp escaped Lance, and Keith jerked back as a grey mass suddenly lurched out of the water. He blankly stared down at the dolphin head that was practically in his lap. It dropped a small, dark box beside him, and sank back into the water with a few joyous clicks.

“What the cheese?” Lance immediately started on his tirade of the ‘jerks of the sea’. Keith didn’t listen to him though, focused on the box that the dolphin apparently wanted him to have. It looked pretty new, so it couldn’t have been under water long. He flipped it open, and came face to face with a beautiful golden ring inlaid with seaglass instead of gemstones.

Lance fell silent beside him, and Keith looked towards him. He looked like he had eaten a handful of wasabi peas (a memory that would always make him laugh). Keith playfully looked down at the ring. “I think a dolphin just proposed to me.”

“It did  _ not _ ! That’s  _ my _ ring and  _ I _ was going to use to propose to you underwater while we were diving but  _ no _ the jerks of the ocean struck again and had to ruin everything!” A string of Spanish curses escaped his lips.

Keith’s heart beat so loudly that he was sure everyone else on the boat could hear him. Why were they all so quiet? Oh god, they  _ knew _ about this, didn’t they? That’s what this whole dive was about, not their show! He couldn’t stop himself from smiling broadly. “Yes.”

Lance paused and eyed him oddly. “Yes what?”

“Yes, I’ll marry you.”

“I didn’t even ask yet!” Lance yelped, but his eyes were dancing and smiling.

Keith immediately shoved the ring back into his hands. “Ask now then.” He watched Lance fumble with the slippery box, probably the reason it fell out of his pouch in the first place. “Hurry up, or I’ll say yes to the dolphin.”

Lance gave the ocean the stink-eye before he turned his attention back to Keith. “So um, wow I had a big speech all prepared and it was beautiful and would be iconic and now it’s all ruined cause dolphins suck and you look like you’re about to jump into the water to just say yes to that jerk. So Keith, will you marry me?” He held out the ring again.

Keith took the ring from him, his heart racing as he grinned broadly. “I’d rather marry the dolphin.” He laughed loudly as Lance tackled him and they both tumbled back into the water, his hand gripping the box and ring so that they wouldn’t lose it a second time. He spluttered a bit as they surfaced again, but laughed as he hugged his boyfriend—no, his fiancé—close. “Of course I will, you lunatic. You punched a fish for me.”

Lance grumbled a bit even as he smiled, and held him close as they treaded water together. “Worth it. I love you more than anything else, you know? I want to be married to you.”

“I want to be married to you too,” Keith agreed. He kissed him with every drop of love and intensity that he had in him, leaving them gasping for air as they parted, as if they’d been submerged beneath the waves.

There, floating in the open ocean with their friends nearby, Keith never felt more loved and at peace. He couldn’t wait to spend his life with this ridiculously wonderful man.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a zine, and I had a tone of fun with this AU! 
> 
> It's my birthday, so I wanted to give all of you a gift! That's how it works, right? Hope you like it! 
> 
> All my socials:  
> [Tumblr](https://storiesbeyondthestars.tumblr.com/) |[Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/storiesbeyondthestars/) |[Stellar Sierras Instragram ](https://www.instagram.com/stellarsierras/) |[Twitter](https://twitter.com/storiesbeyond1)
> 
> Story betaed by: [Silvamoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvamoon/pseuds/Silvamoon)


End file.
